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Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Our story: The engagement

As I mentioned yesterday, John
and I will be celebrating our third wedding anniversary tomorrow,
so I decided it was time to share a little bit more about how we met, our engagement, and our wedding day!

After John and I met, we started dating long distance. John still had one more year at Florida State and I was finishing up in East Lansing. Although we lived over 1,000 miles apart, we were able to see each other absurdly often.

John has a family member that works for Delta, so he was able to fly standby whenever he wanted.

Our typical week looked something like this... John would leave Tallahassee Thursday morning (fly to Atlanta to Detroit to East Lansing) and arrive in the evening. Since most people don't have class on Fridays, he only had to skip Thursday.

He would generally stay in Michigan until Monday evening and then fly back in time for class on Tuesday morning (so basically he was only in Tallahassee on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, ha!).

The whole standby thing usually worked out, but there were a few nights spent stuck in the Atlanta airport... just waiting for Chik-Fil-A to open up for breakfast and then hopefully making the next flight.

So given our circumstances, we spent a considerable amount of time together! (John may or may not have graduated with a degree in "Social Science" instead of the planned Econ due to missing too many econometrics classes... but that's neither here nor there - we were in love!).

Anyway, it was Christmas break, and John and I were pretty excited to head down to Florida, spend a few days in Tallahassee, and then head to Miami where we were going on a cruise.

I had a feeling that John may propose while we were on vacation, but I wasn't sure when it was going to happen.

(Am I the only one that thinks there is something a little bit concerning about a completely surprise proposal? I mean, "when" should always be a little bit of a surprise... but hopefully the person is expecting it - at least a little bit anyway...!)

On New Year's Eve we had a pretty laid back day... we spent some time swimming, John made me dinner, and we had a lovely bottle of champagne. Shortly after finishing dinner, John asked me to marry him.

So sweet! I feel like it's really important to at least have an idea of what the general timeline would be! My best friend had no idea her fiance was even considering it and stared at him for a full minute before answering because she thought it was a joke and was deciding what level of angry she should be!

You guys are so lucky you were able to see each other so much while doing the long distance thing! My hubs and I did it for 1.5 years and it was tough. Love your engagement photos! Also, I completely agree about it not being a total surprise!

That's amazing that you guys were able to make it work so well!! When my husband and I first started dating we were only like 200 miles apart but we did not get to see each other that often. In fact during the first 9 months of our relationship I can probably count on 2 hands the number of times we were able to see each other! But it all worked out for both of us in the end!

So fun to have all of those adventures! We dated long distance too for most of 18 months. We managed to see each other about every 2-3 weeks, but it was crazy. Maybe that's why even after nearly 5 years of marriage I am done after only about 2 nights apart! :)

Oh my gosh...I have ALWAYS said what you said about how you shouldn't be THAT surprised! Kevin thinks I'm a surprise killer but hey, you should know it's at least coming because hopefully you've been talking about marriage and such...like we emailed about.

Anyway...love that story and love your photos! I can't believe he flew there that often and changed his major. True love :)